The Harrys That Could
by Milkbottle
Summary: "Harry tuned the whole world out and gave his wand the heart-eyes. His fragile, breakable, fancy-shmancy wooden stick. His beautiful nuclear weapon. So many possibilities. So much explosion. Harry grinned." Unrelated fics exploring an assortment of Harry Potters and other possible reactions to canon events.
1. Wandhappy Harry

**Wandhappy Harry**

* * *

The moment eleven-year-old Harry saw Seamus's water goblet explode all over his face and then anticlimactically roll across the Gryffindor table, a fire kindled in his gut. Figuratively speaking.

'Merlin's hairy tit!'

'Seamus you okay?'

'Holy hell Finnegan, 'chu need rum so bad for?'

'Aye, aren't you like eleven?'

As Seamus sat, his hair sparking, his eyebrows crisping, his wand glinting, Harry cast wide green eyes upon his own unassuming little pocket-missile-machine-gun-thing. 'He made water go boom with his wooden stick,' he summarized with eloquence, and was almost disappointed when the wand did not respond.

Next to him, Ron Weasley couldn't be less bothered, distracted as he was with his two lovely chicken legs. Just across, Neville Longbottom was curling into himself, apparently spooked by the loud noise. Hermione Granger next to him was equal parts disapproving and fascinated. Her fingers twitched, reaching out for some book or info-packet or obscure physics reference or whatnot. Outside of Seamus's five-foot radius, an unconcerned student body went about their dinners as if these commonplace explosions hardly merited a second glance, and it dawned upon Harry that they really didn't. Why, even the teachers weren't doing much excepting a few annoyed glowers and a vehement 'Ten points from Gryffindor for endangering your fellow students!' from Professor Batty — er, Professor Snape. An oddly truthful claim that literally nobody cared about.

Harry tuned the whole world out and gave his wand the heart-eyes. His fragile, breakable, fancy-shmancy wooden stick. His beautiful nuclear weapon. So many possibilities. So much explosion.

Harry grinned.

* * *

'Oho,' said Harry, turning pages.

'Oho,' said Harry, body trembling with excitement as he wet his finger to turn pages with greater dexterity.

'Oho!' said Harry, eyes landing on the wand movements for an amazing curse that turned a person's appendix into a bundle of porcupine quills. His hand immediately reached for his wand.

'Harry?' asked another voice. Harry looked up to find Percy Weasley standing in front of him and seeming strangely concerned. Percy read the title aloud. ' _Ninety-Nine Spells for The Average Aggressively-Inclined Problem-Solver to Successfully Function in the Modern Wizarding Age?'_

'Yes,' Harry said as he began to practice the movement, pointing the wand in no particular direction and consequently making Percy throw himself onto the floor in self-preservation. Everyone else leaped a few feet away from him in tandem, leaving a great deal of empty space around the little First Year.

Harry continued to practice, ignoring everyone around him.

* * *

'See this ball?' said an excited Oliver Wood.

'I see this ball,' said an excited Harry Potter.

'This is a snitch,' said the grinning fifth-year. The little-winged ball darted around the duo with playful drama. 'You're the Seeker, you catch it.'

'Okay,' Harry nodded furiously. 'What's it do?'

'Do?' Wood asked.

'Yes, after I catch it,' Harry said, eyes glimmering in anticipation. 'What's it do?'

'Well,' Wood said. 'It wins us the game, of course. One-hundred and fifty points.' He clapped Harry on the back. 'Yours is the most important job on the field, kid.'

'Okay, sure, that's great,' Harry waved a dismissive hand. 'But like, does it explode into fireworks, or like into victory glitter, or like into tiny golden metal shards that fly around slicing the necks of every git I have a beef with, or…?'

'Er,' said Wood, tilting his head. 'No. It just stops flying. Once you catch it. You hold it. You show it to the referee and the referee says you won. Then we win. Real simple, real clean, definitely no exploding, definitely no neck-slicing?'

'Hmph,' said a visibly disappointed Harry, which to Wood didn't look like a very good sign. 'How droll. What about that one?' he pointed at the Quaffle. 'Does that explode?'

'Er,' said Wood, furrowing his brows. 'No.'

'Hmph,' said Harry, clearly losing interest with every minute, much to Wood's alarm. 'And that one?'

'Oh,' said Wood, looking slightly relieved. 'It doesn't explode, but it does like to zoom around the field trying to deal killing blows to every player unlucky enough to stumble across its path. Rather angry little fellows, these bludgers.' He patted a vivacious brown ball with affection. The whole case trembled aggressively but also cutely.

'Hm,' said Harry, casting an intrigued look at the sweet little things. 'Interesting.'

In the dungeons, Professor Snape paused midway through his morning routine of shining his beloved Quidditch Cup to consider this new feeling he was having. 'It is almost,' he said to himself with a small frown. 'Like I am in mourning.' Professor Snape did not know why the hell his emotions were malfunctioning considering these small moments spent polishing the Quidditch Cup were the few joys he had left in life, but he knew who was to blame for it. 'Potter,' he grumbled. 'Boy doesn't stop giving me grief. Five points from Gryffindor.'

* * *

Harry leaped onto the back of a smelly troll and then shoved his wand up its nose.

'Ew, gross,' said Ron, despite the seriousness of the situation. Hermione, even as she shook with sheer terror at her close encounter with death and mortality and other such nightmares-turned-reality that eleven-year-olds were wont to have on infrequent occasion, was unable to help herself and nodded in agreement.

'Er,' Harry said, hanging on for dear life as he thought about what to do in this sticky situation. 'If it worked that well with water, troll bogey shouldn't be too difficult, what say you?' he consulted with the resident genius who had no idea what the hell he was on about.

'Er,' Harry said, needling his wand around in the poor troll's nostrils to get a better angle. He turned his head away and screwed his eyes shut. 'Muc-us explod-icus?'

The troll's head went boom.

* * *

'Bombarda,' said Harry, pointing his wand at the tea-stained porcelain cup he'd pocketed during breakfast. The cup remained stationary.

'Bombarda,' said Harry, pointing his wand harder. The circle of empty space around him widened as students moved further out of his immediate vicinity while exchanging looks of terrified affection.

'Bombarda,' said Harry with a slight whine, and Hermione Granger sighed as she collected every pillow in the common room to build a nice, comfy fort around the determined little wizard; Hermione Granger would protect her trigger-happy cinnamon roll from every harm, including the harm he did to himself.

'Bombarda,' Harry squinted with purpose and pointed with grit and was rewarded with the porcelain cup exploding into tiny, painful looking shards and launching in all directions. A few stuck themselves into the pillows. A few almost hit some jumping students. One whizzed past Harry's arm to leave a small but angry red scrape.

Hermione gave the harm-inducing shard a furious look before whipping out a band-aid; she'd taken to carrying at least a dozen in her bookbag twenty-four seven. You know, just in case. Harry gave not a shit about his bleeding arm. Instead, he busily gazed at his wand with absolute adoration.

The circle of space around him widened.

* * *

'Harry, no,' said Hermione.

'Harry, _yes,_ ' said Harry, and all the levitating feathers immediately burst into flames, much to the frustration of his fellow First Years and a startled Professor Flitwick.

* * *

Deep in the dredges of Hogwarts Library's dark and dreary and extremely forbidden and also shamefully accessible Restricted Section, aggressive books about extra-aggressive spells began to take themselves out of the looming bookshelves for no apparent reason. Or at least so it would've seemed to anyone unlucky enough to stumble upon the fresh hell that was this scene.

'Hm, fiendfyre, _interesting_ ,' hummed Harry Potter as he struggled to turn the pages of a snappish little reference text through the slippery folds of his cool new invisibility cloak.

Across the darkness of the castle, the beds of Madame Pince, Professor Dumbledore, and Hermione Granger found their occupiers shaking awake with an inexplicable sense of trepidation.

* * *

'Yes, Harry, I am going to kill you now,' said Quirrelmort as he advanced upon Harry, his hands waving menacingly. Well okay, maybe not those exact words, but who cared about evil monologues when one could instead invest their efforts in getting the hell out of this well-lit room apparently tailor-made for macabre confrontations between sworn arch-nemeses.

His wand was all the way on the other end of the room, the stone was in his pocket, the mirror was glinting with drama and being unhelpfully inanimate. Hello, Harry shouted in his head. My heart's desire is to escape this weirdo lunatic, I don't suppose you have any enlightening suggestions?

'Hm, yes, evil claims, nefarious intentions', Quirrelmort said, though the effect was diminished what with his (their?) terrible coordination; the uglier face was currently in control and they hadn't quite practiced walking backward. Quirrelmort really could benefit from lessons with Michael Jackson. Harry had the bizarre image of an evil black-clothed Voldemort moonwalking his way towards a wailing baby in an elaborate ivory crib and resisted the urge to toss himself into the ring of fire around the room. Wait, fire!

Harry threw himself upon the ground and did some healthy cowering. 'No, please, don't kill me, I'm eleven,' he said, channeling his terror and all those lessons with Quirrel to give his voice a convincing stutter. Of course, the fact that he was eleven was insignificant considering this mad fellow had tried to kill him when he was one, but Harry had never been all that great at improv. 'I'm so defenseless, I'm so scared, please, no,' he said, shifting backward with his palms as Quirrelmort continued to advance, an evil grin spreading across both his features as he regarded this helpless victim of his. Harry continued to move across the stone floor, shift by dramatic shift until his palms finally stumbled across some lovely velveteen fabric, oh _yes_.

'Oh no,' Harry continued, looking all sad before taking a firm hold of one end of Quirrel's turban-wrapping and leaping to his feet. Quirrelmort paused, appearing to have suffered some whiplash, and by the time he recovered Harry was already lighting most of the fabric on fire and then lassoing it across poor Quirrelmort's chest with unsurprising precision. Harry might not have been a cowboy but he had enough experience handling misbehaving hoses in Aunt Petunia's three-time award-winning flower garden to manage this stunning display. Quirrelmort made many pained sounds as he attempted to unravel himself from his own flaming turban whip and in the distraction, Harry ran like hell across the room to wrap his fingers around his beloved motha-fuckin' wooden stick-weapon.

'No!' said Quirrelmort.

Harry pointed his wand at the flaming fabric. 'Epoximise!'

The Sticking Charm took effect and his evil arch-nemesis began to tug at the bindings with new rigor. Harry continued. 'Spray-us gasolin-us!'

A jet of concentrated gasoline erupted from his wand and bathed Quirrelmort from head to toe. With added encouragement from the fuel, the fire seized across his (their?) frame and he (they?) began to stumble about in the panic. Harry hid behind the mirror, and an odd itch rose up his throat before leaping out of his lips as a low cackle. Quirrelmort stumbled so much he backed straight into the ring of fire with an agonized squeak.

And, well, it was kind of obvious how that went.

* * *

Dumbledore gave crispy Quirrelmort a bewildered glance.

'But— how —' said Dumbledore, confused not at the sight of burnt corpse but at the very much conscious and not-magically-exhausted visage of one sweet, baby-faced Harry Potter, currently sitting cross-legged in front of the Mirror of Erised and happily chattering away at his sadly smiling parents or whatever it was he saw in that piece of historical rubbish. Dumbledore resisted the urge to 'hmph', for that would go against the whole benevolent-grandfather vibe he was angling for. Blasted thing had one job, and it caved to an eleven-year-old. Speaking of eleven-year-olds —

'Best not to ask, Professor,' said a small voice, and he turned around — his beard whooshing — to see bushy hair and its accompanying Hermione Granger stepping over the threshold, the picture of long-suffering resignation.

'Hello, Harry' she cooed, approaching the boy as one would a wild animal. 'Did Harry make the Dark Lord go boom?' Harry turned his head to give Hermione a blinding smile.

'I love magic,' he said, lovingly cradling the holly wand.

Hermione patted his head. 'Good boy, Harry,' she said, smoothing back a messy strand. Harry leaned into her palm, beaming with pride.

Dumbledore tilted his head and spared a thought for the schmancy Elder Wand safely ensconced in his robe pocket. The ancient Hallow trembled, almost as if in fear or apprehension or some such human emotion that ancient Hallows weren't supposed to be capable of. Dumbledore imagined it in the hands of Harry Potter and then shuddered, for the world would not survive the day it did, and consequently resolved to ensure a safe departure to the 'next great adventure' long before this ever happened.

It was probably best to keep the boy as happy — and as far away from him — as he could, in the meantime. You know.

Just in case, and whatnot.

* * *

 **A/N**

Mildly-unhinged adorable Harry is adorable and my favourite thing in the world and I just had to.


	2. The Boy-Who-Loved

**The Boy-Who-Loved**

* * *

Now, this Tri-wishy washy nonsense was really getting on Harry's nerves.

Harry harrumphed, inwardly appreciating the alliterative nature of the gesture as the crowd offered him a healthy mixture of cheers and boos and varying degrees of incomprehensible slurs in response to his arrival, which was nice. Harry would feel injured, but Harry gave nary a shit, because Harry had decided that Harry had had enough.

First, someone puts his name in the goblet. Then, Ron starts acting like a preteen git. Then, the only adult to live up to their adulthoods by helping a fourteen-year-old boy with this obscure gladiator-esque tournament rubbish is Hagrid, and Hagrid can't even use a wand without hiding it inside an umbrella, which complicates matters and also loses Harry a great deal of faith in this whole 'let the adults handle matters' shtick. After that, they make things worse by trying to feed him to a dragon.

Really, they want to put him on a flammable stick and have him fly _towards_ the also flying, fire-breathing reptile, really? Harry hadn't gone through three years of life-threatening shenanigans to come out of the mess without a carefully cultivated, much-needed sense of self-preservation, seriously, Harry was not insane. Harry preferred his dragons pint-sized and partial to friendly belly rubs à la Norberta and definitely not large enough to skewer him with worryingly spiked tail-ends, thanks.

The Boy-Who-Lived-And-Who-Would-Honestly-Prefer-To-Continue-Living stared at the Horntail. The Horntail glared back. Harry stared at the golden egg. The golden egg had no eyes but seemed to have acquired a suspiciously smug air, which was quite off-putting considering it was an _egg_. And _golden._ Where did it get off trying to be smug about anything, the precocious piece of crap. Harry looked at Hagrid, who was too busy bestowing affectionate smiles upon the raging beast to bother cheering for the poor boy, which Harry did not begrudge. Instead, Harry gave him a fond look, because honestly. Classic Hagrid.

Harry spent a few moments reminiscing over his last Care of Magical Creatures lesson, and how safe things used to be. Then he pulled out his wand, began the wand movements for the oft-practiced Summoning Charm, opened his mouth and said, 'Accio Niffler.'

A small black blob with stubby limbs came flying from across the castle backdrop, front-pocket spilling out small bits of tinfoil and a random assortment of shiny objects over the heads of unsuspecting onlookers — Harry spotted a Remembrall bounce off of a broody-looking Professor Snape's oily forehead and didn't bother covering his grin even a little bit. The Niffler landed in Harry's waiting arms with a delicate thump before blinking up at him with adorably bulbous black eyes. Masculinely fighting the urge to melt into a puddle of goo, Harry decided to name him Edgar. The newly-christened Edgar rolled around in his arms and Harry saw lady parts — oops. Perhaps Harry shoudn't take so much inspiration from Hagrid.

Harry decided to stick with Edgar, because he figured Edgarda sounded like something you shouted at people before you casually poked them with engraved broadswords.

Edgar chirruped in his arms, and Harry really did melt. He tickled her belly, and Edgar made a pleased sound that basically killed Harry dead. Carefully cradling the sweet thing, he pointed towards the shining golden egg. The bulbous eyes followed, and then almost fell out of their sockets.

'You see the golden egg?' Harry cooed, unable to help himself. 'Isn't it a pretty golden egg?' Edgar nodded, stars in her eyes. 'If you get it for me,' Harry said to the precious little munchkin, not quite willing to let her go just that very moment, 'I will get you a nest full of galleons. And a snitch. I will get you ten snitches. Does that sound like a good deal to you, pretty girl?' Harry dropped a small kiss upon her head, which Edgar enjoyed. It, of course, sounded like a great deal to Edgar, because Edgar was a Niffler and no Niffler was going to say no to more pretty things to marvel at.

The crowd watched in bemusement as Edgar leaped out of Harry's arms, quickly burrowed underground and then pop her head out by the nest within a scant few seconds. Edgar spent a moment to admire her reflection on the egg's gleaming surface before proceeding to shove the entire thing into her cute little pooch-pocket and then popping back under again. The Horntail did not notice a single thing, because the Horntail was busy puzzling over why Harry was just standing around not doing anything, but the Horntail was hardly one to count her eggs before they hatched, pardon the pun. She had better things to do than to bother with puny humans, even if those puny humans appeared to possess maternal instincts on par with her own — a feat worth secretly respecting. Later, Harry would admit to having experienced a modicum of confusion when the Horntail offered him a subtle nod of approval, though on a being that huge it wasn't exactly unnoticeable. At the moment, however, he was hardly going to make a scene. He simply nodded back like he knew exactly what was happening.

After a small moment, the Niffler leaped out and back into Harry's arms, eager for more belly tickles. A happy Harry had no problem obliging.

Bagman blathered on about something-something. The judges made pretty numbers shoot into the air with bamboozled expressions. The crowd murmured amongst themselves about how powerful Harry must truly be for the great dragon to have 'submitted' to him despite his having cast nothing but a Summoning Charm. A select few began to wonder if school-wide ostracisation had really been a smart decision. Harry was unconcerned, busy as he was with peppering his new baby with affectionate kisses.

'Who's a good Niffler, yes you are!' Harry said, chuffing the little creature under her snout and cooing some more as she unintentionally chased his touch. She made a grab for his spectacles, which he laughingly dodged. Several young witches and wizards developed a crush that day, not on the Boy-Who-Lived, but on the Boy-Who-Loved.

Harry sauntered back out of the arena. Edgar would certainly enjoy a field trip to Gringotts. Perhaps a small detour to the Gryffindor Locker Room was also to be made — after all, he _had_ promised Edgar ten snitches, and it wasn't like they were going to be playing any Quidditch.

Honestly, adults and their terrible decisions.

* * *

 **A/N**

So this is a series now, I guess. More to come... sometime. I don't know.


	3. Fate, Liquidated

**Fate, Liquidated**

* * *

Harry had come to understand the Wizarding World as a pulsing mess of inconsistencies.

He recalled his first fateful day of Potions, when Snape had waxed lyrical about the wonders of the subject. _'I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper on death.'_ His voice had been uncharacteristically gentle, and it had spoken volumes about his love for the subject. Harry had been entranced. Of course, the days — or even the mere minutes — to follow had quickly finished off his fledgling fascination with a quick death; Harry drew a proportional link between Potions class and prolonged unhappiness, indifferently washed his hands off the subject and never looked back, not even for a second.

At least, not until Sixth Year, and Slughorn's fond recollections of Harry's mother. And the Half-Blood Prince. And yet another fateful first day of Potions.

The Wizarding World appeared to take the notions of bottling fame, brewing glory and stoppering death for granted. The Wizarding World was a bewildering contradiction in that they'd successfully managed to liquefy _luck_ — only previously understood as a wishful concept, something you could use to explain away some probabilities over others — but also willingly acquiesced to _rules_ about how much one could proverbially (or perhaps even literally) shit all over the laws of nature.

Harry considered the vial of Felix Felicis.

Since he'd won it three weeks ago after brewing the best potion in class — an astonishing feat that he took no credit for, though he had no problem whatsoever with reaping the benefits — Harry had taken to carrying it around in the mokeskin pouch hung comfortably around his neck. Befitting its value, it sat in illustrious company with the Map, the Invisibility Cloak, a shard from Sirius's broken mirror, a change of clothes, two Wheeze-Original fake wands and a veritable pile of Mars Bars.

Currently, however, it lay carefully cradled in Harry's hands as he stood in the school library, a Quidditch-sore back taking support against a towering bookshelf dedicated to books on _Conceptual Potions_. Small droplets playfully leaped about the potion's surface like cute little goldfish, though none attempted to escape. About the size of a thumb, the vial contained around thirty milliliters worth of liquid luck — enough, upon full consumption, to last him about twelve hours.

The brewing process, on the other hand, spanned a frantic, exhaustive, measured-to-the-moment duration of eleven hours, forty-two minutes and thirty-eight seconds, and it left no room for error. This, of course, did not include all of the incredibly rare and expensive ingredients that took a stunning forty-three days to source and prep. Harry was amused at the level of precision, though he rightly assumed that it sought to compensate for the nigh improbable result, an essence of guaranteed perfect output. His time spent researching had also told him that the recipe and the ingredient information could only be found in _An Anthology of Elixirs and Oft-Unanswerables_ , and it just so happened that the Hogwarts Restricted Section had a copy. In fact, he was standing there this very second, and the book was in the bookshelf right behind him.

He hadn't told any of his friends about his curiosity, though he figured that they wouldn't have been surprised. Hermione and Ron were well-aware that Harry would go to great lengths for few things in life. Honesty. Friendship. Will. Love. Sustained survival.

One of these, people would protest, was not like the others, though Harry knew himself better than they did.

Something had reawakened within him after he'd gotten his hands on the Felix Felicis. A forgotten interest, in memory of his mother, in the preservation of self, a side of him that had once developed as a reaction to living with the Dursleys — a side that he had forgotten in all these years of defining himself as a Gryffindor. (Brave and righteous would only get him so far, and martyrdom wasn't something he was looking at from a career perspective.)

His yearly exploits spoke well enough in support of the matter. Harry didn't need a prophecy to know that something was trying to test his ability to stay alive. Of course, it certainly didn't help that the whole world and their grandmother were pinning their hopes on one made by a crackpot old drunk in a desperate bid to score a gig, and just so happened to casually flirt with the notion of certain death, logic and reason be damned. They'd done it once before, and it had led to the death of his parents and the imprisonment of one-as-good-as, not to mention a rather bleak childhood for Harry himself.

Harry didn't understand Voldemort. How afraid of dying did one have to be anyway, to consider a one-year-old boy a threat? Harry also didn't understand Professor Dumbledore. Was it so important to have control that one could only stomach the _loss_ of control when 'Fate' gave one a means to validate it?

Well, Harry was not Voldemort, or Professor Dumbledore. It did not matter if that aforementioned 'certain death' belonged to Harry, Voldemort, or even to someone who acted in their stead. Either way, Harry preferred that it happened on his own terms, and not on something as flimsy as the predictions, or predilections, of fate. It was high time that Harry stopped rolling with shit and started getting heads rolling for him instead.

In fact, that aforementioned Slytherin side of his thought it a particularly amusing irony to defy fate by practically _ensuring_ the version he preferred.

* * *

 **A/N**

Canon didn't really utilize this plot device to the fullest, in my opinion. Using something like liquid luck to charm a professor somehow fell short of satisfactory for me — I mean really, talk about the misuse of a veritable Ex Machina. It's like that thing with the genie and the three wishes — of _course_ the first reasonable wish to make would be for an unlimited number of wishes.

I might take it forward, actually. This feels like a prologue. Pop me a message in the reviews or in my inbox if you'd like to chat about it!

Merry Christmas, guys. What's on your wishlist?


End file.
